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Bring the Heat

Spring and I met up this year in Seminole, Texas, Gaines County: #1 in Cotton, #1 in oil and #1 in peanuts. When we began our Intensive Journal workshop here in Tucson, the leader noted that it was the beginning of spring, a time of birth and rebirth. Yes.

Today, for the first time since I left Minnesota, I’m not pressed by travel and can reflect on the new season. This is the culmination of Imbolc, those lambs in the belly (imbolc) now gambol on the green. Or on the snow covered fields in the case of Minnesota.

And that’s a good thing to note. Spring comes astronomically when the sun’s center lines up with the earth’s equator. It come meteorologically with a nuance determined by your latitude. At Minnesota’s 45th latitude, half-way from that equator to the north pole, meteorological spring comes when the bloodroot blooms. (at least one naturalist I asked defined the coming of spring that way.) That could be well into April some years.

On the other hand, here in Tucson 32 degrees of latitude from the equator spring announces the upcoming dry season, aggravated this year by a persistent drought that has many southwestern parts of the U.S. facing another season of extreme wildfire danger.

In Manta, Ecuador which Kate and I visited in October of 2011 the equinox means the sun stares straight at you. It was hot when we were there, only a couple of weeks after the spring equinox (which comes in September in the southern hemisphere).

At Artemis Hives and Gardens it arrived with a couple of feet or so of snow on the ground. That means the activities of working the soil, planting the early crops will not come until well into April. But the shift in the earth’s relationship to the sun does mean that the solar gain per square meter of ground has taken strong purchase and will one day warm even the soil.

That’s the true promise of spring. It brings heat. Where the temperatures are moderate, this is a boon for agriculture. Where temperatures are already hot, spring can exacerbate them.

As the heat begins to change the weather, I look forward to seeing more and more of our land.

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“Not I, not anyone else, can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know.”
– Walt Whitman

Climate Communication (Climate Communication operates as a project of the Aspen Global Change Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the scientific understanding of Earth systems and global environmental change. Animated and narrated graphics help tell the story of climate change science. )

The Copenhagen Diagnosis (synthesizes the most policy-relevant climate science published since the close-off of material for the last IPCC report.)

Professor Richard Somerville website "Perhaps the most important function of climate science on an issue of broad interest like global warming is to help educate the public and to provide useful input into the policy process." Somerville is one of the MOOC's instructors and a former Scripps scientist.

RealClimate (a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary.)

Links for getting up to speed quickly. (a one stop link for resources that people can use to get up to speed on the issue of climate change. provided by RealClimate)

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office(GMAO) works to maximize the impact of satellite observations in climate, weather and atmospheric composition prediction using comprehensive global models and data assimilation.

The Regional Climate Model Evaluation System (RCMES) is designed to greatly facilitate regional-scale evaluations of climate and Earth system models by providing standardized access to a vast and comprehensive set of observations, as well as tools for performing common analysis and visualization tasks.

Interactive Science Simulations

Fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena from the PhET™ project at the University of Colorado. (this link goes to climate change sims)

Surging Seas Map pages show threats from sea level rise and storm surge to all 3,000+ coastal towns, cities, counties and states in the Lower 48.

CO2Now.org makes it easy to see the most current CO2 level and what it means.

Resources For The Great Wheel

General links in areas of interest to Great Wheel Readers
living in season (Waverly Fitzgerald's ways to do just that)